Reichskommissariat Ostland
오스트란트 국가판무관부
The German civil occupation regime of 1941–1945 in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and western Belarus. Ruled from Riga by Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse under Alfred Rosenberg’s Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, it was the territory in which the SS, the Einsatzgruppen and local auxiliary police killed over a million Jews and others.
In depth
Its creation was decreed by Hitler on 17 July 1941, and after a period of military rule the civil administration took over from the autumn. It was divided into four general districts — Estonia under Generalkommissar Karl-Siegmund Litzmann, Latvia under Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, Lithuania under Theodor Adrian von Renteln and White Ruthenia under Wilhelm Kube — each with a native collaborationist administration and auxiliary police. But security lay with the Higher SS and Police Leader and the economy and labour with other central agencies, so Rosenberg and Lohse had limited real power.
The administration confiscated Soviet state and party property and returned nationalised farmland to its former owners, but confiscated Jewish property. Under Generalplan Ost the region was to be Germanised and joined to Germany. The Red Army recaptured most of it in 1943–1944; White Ruthenia was detached in April 1944, and in September Erich Koch replaced Lohse as Reichskommissar. The rump administration held out in the Courland Pocket until May 1945.